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Ask HN: Why is Europe great at making game studios but not tech companies?

3 points by butternick ↗ HN
Rockstar, Cd project red, Larian Studios, Hello Games.. the list of top European games studios is long. It’s clear technology isn’t the barrier as game tech is more complex than most web dev, so what holds Europe back?

9 comments

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throwaway4good
Abundant and cheap venture capital.
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pyeri
The most popular theory I've heard in this regard is that top European politicians are constantly corrupted and bought off by American lobbyists backed by Big Tech companies.

Read articles and watch documentaries related to LiMux Initiative[1] taken by Munich city council to use only FOSS and freedom friendly software like Linux and Libre Office in order to cut costs and gain technological independence. Read about how it was sabotaged from Germany's own top federal bureaucracy who's politicians were known to have taken funding, etc. from Microsoft.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

t312227
this may be an "unpopular" opinion but:

just remember: generally spoken (west-)europe (mostly) consists of vassal-states to the US ... and a handful of unimportant dwarf-states.

and nothing shouts "vassal" more in the early 21st century than being submissive to the big-tech companies of your ... overlord ... hegemony ... land of the free ... "arsenal of freedom and democracy" ... or whatever expression suites your world-view regarding the US.

ihmo. every other self-respecting and self-reliant country/entity of countries developed its own propaganda- and surveillance-technology and blocked the ones from the US to certain extends.

which, if you remove all the fluff, in the end they are - also we tend to refer to them as "web 2.0"- or "social network"-portals, or "search-engines", "some service"- a la "free-mail"-provider and "operating system"-providers etc.

just my 0.02€

neximo64
European VCs want the cash return too early in the product cycle. I.e they are too risk averse.
mnky9800n
this is the true answer. everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too. working in norway it is almost impossible to convince a norwegian to work a startup because they simply have ingrained in them that they will get a job and start a family and go to cabin to go skiing and nothing inside of them says "if i work hard good things will happen." It is simply that they exist. Sure it is possible to find people who do work hard and pursue interesting careers. But there is not the hunger or the drive that you find in other places like silly valley, shenzen, taipei, etc.
dagw
start a family and go to cabin to go skiing and nothing inside of them says "if i work hard good things will happen."

I'd argue that if you have a family, a house, a cabin and time to go skiing then good things have already happened.

butternick
I think ‘class’ has a lot to do with it.

I have a hunch that a good portion of the start-up capital allocated in Europe finds its way to the upper-classes.

I’ve worked for a European VC and experienced many founders with no knowledge of product, marketing or design were given ample access to funds and opportunities simply because they went to a ‘posh’ school and were good at selling themselves.

This is also the case at sme sized tech companies in Europe where mba types are promoted over people who build product.

Where as game studios are always founded by developers. Developers who if nothing else know how to ship.

lispm
The "Europe" does not exist as an entity like the "US". There is no single main language, there is no centralized military, no venture capital market like in the US, there is no single currency (the UK for example is no longer in the EU and never integrated deeply, especially not the currency), ...

There is the EU, but even there the integration is weaker and one of nation states with their own kings, presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, ... The EU 'president' is in no way comparable to the US 'president'. The EU military is not like the US military.